Lil Yachty - Teenage Emotions - Review
Lil Yachty Teenage Emotions
2016 was the year that Lil Yachty ruined rap music. At only 19 years old Miles McCollum and his two alter egos—Lil Yachty and Lil Boat—using only the assistance of one mixtape and a Sprite commercial decimated an entire genre of music. Lil Yachty’s mixtape Lil Boat garnered an uncommon amount of attention for such an upstart artist. Surpassing the popularity of his fellow rap deconstructionists by a decent margin with hypnotically smoothing trap-lullaby hits like “One Night” and “Minnesota”.
Needless to say this is no small feat for a young man with crab legs on his head. In fact it’s absolutely not true. Still, this rhetoric seems to prosper as I’m certain it will now more than ever that Mr. Boat has a major label debut titled Teenage Emotions. With Teenage Emotions Yachty has the chance to prove to the world that he’s trying to stick around more than just one night. Overly hyped debuts such as this one can be tough. This release should undoubtedly be the cause for every blogging detractor subscribed to Boom Bap Nation to cross their fingers, hold their breath and say twelve Hail Mary’s ensuring that he fails miserably. Thus sending all his fans to their local vinyl bin to buy refurbished copies of Illmatic.
However, I’m not that cynical. I don’t want anyone to fail, that’s just mean. Lil Yachty is a young guy and his life has been put under an intense microscope since his rise to stardom. His music and persona has highlighted a noticeable disconnect in young and old music listeners. It seems to me they’re both just sorely misunderstanding each other. On one hand we have an older generation upset at how their culture has aged and on the other we have a group of kids that just like having fun.
Lil Yachty’s music can easily be described as vapid, tasteless, obnoxious and to a large group of people, garbage. To an extent, yeah, it is a lot of those things. It’s also kind of charming though. Unlike his contemporaries that are thrown under the same unfair umbrella term of ‘mumble rap’ Lil Yachty has charisma to spare and a sense of humor that’s unmatched. He doesn’t take himself too seriously and that’s a really under appreciated characteristic. It doesn’t hardly make for intelligently captivating music but it doesn’t have too. The concept of ‘lullaby trap’ is hilarious and enjoyable in a lofty, turn-off-your-brain sort of way. Yet, with Teenage Emotions standing at nearly 70 minutes long Lil Yachty might be challenging us to turn off our brains a bit too much. This album is unnecessarily long, sprawling, redundant and taxing.
Teenage Emotions opens in a similar fashion as the Lil Boat mixtape, with the introduction of his two alter egos. We have the overly auto-tuned singer Lil Yachty who is basically the equivalent of a Lil B tweet coming to life; very positive and supportive. Then we have Lil Boat, who is nasty, sexual and violent and he’s basically the excuse that Yachty uses to spit lyrics that hold absolutely no water. This first track is called “Like a Star” and it’s actually pretty sweet. It has some ugly auto tune and some typically clunky rhymes but the production this time around is God like. In fact this entire album has a very crisp, base-y production that absolutely slaps. Yachty sounds genuinely endearing on this and plenty other moments on the album, such as the closer, which is a sweet love song to his mom. He makes it clear that he’s happy and thankful for his position and that’s cool and all but more often than not it makes for some pretty unlistenable moments. The best of which being this intro and the worst being the off-tempo mess “Bring it Back”.
The Lil Boat persona gets his turn on the second track and he dominates the majority of the beginning of the record. We hear Boat put his awkward flow over an awkward groove on “DN Freestyle”, become a fourth member of Migos on “Peek-A-Boo”, bring some energetic braggadocio on the fantastically disgusting “Dirty Mouth”, and leaves us on the obnoxious bass driven “Harley”. Shockingly though, while these songs wont be enough to turn the ears of any detractors, none of these tracks are that bad until the other side of the coin comes into dismantle the album for the nearly the entire remaining fifty minutes.
“All Around Me” is a horribly produced song with a melody that only someone like Soulja Boy would ever get on and it has possibly the worst verse YG has ever put on a track. “Better” gives off a putrid, island-y Jason Mraz vibe. “Moments in Time”, “Lady in Yellow”, “Say My Name” and plenty other songs after this point are disturbingly underwritten and melodically deficient. There’s two R&B features that go over well until Yachty squelches them. Such is the case on the odd Tegan and Sara interpolation “Running With a Ghost”. Then there’s “Forever Young” featuring Diplo that actually might be the best structured song on the album until Yachty hilariously flubs the jubilant chorus with his typically awkward and unromantic crooning. “X-Men”, however, is a banger and would’ve made a nice addition to a less bloated album.
This is a sprawling, sluggish, self-indulgent trudge through one of the shallowest minds in hip hop right now. If there’s one thing this album has in common with the emotional state of a teenager it’s inconsistency. Teenage Emotions simply does not live up to it’s title, nor it’s all inclusive album cover. The hedonism and petulance are enjoyable at only the most cursory level in the smallest of doses. The most frequent observations made are that Lil Yachty appreciates his mom, and that he has within him a litany of creative ways to make ‘pussies’ wet. After that I suppose the most earnest moment is Yachty admitting he had sex with his God sister featuring a distressing line that rhymes “sucked me like an insect” with “I guess that’s incest”.
Even with a small spoonful of highlights, this album is a chore. Making this review I feel like I’m 15, and I’m grounded, and I have to keep listening to this album as punishment for stealing my dad’s debit card. As much as I like defending Lil Yachty, especially his wholesome public persona, this is album is a reminder of why people are so skeptical of him in the first place. The amateur charm he brings with him simply doesn’t stay charming for 21 songs.
Still, he does have youth on his side. Perhaps he simply hasn’t gone through enough in life to craft an album of significant depth with varied song topics, and he does still have a lot going for him. He’s ambitious, funny, and retains a modicum of creativity. He also has managed to keep his finger on the pulse of his huge, juvenile audience. My only hope is that he can connect with this demographic on a meaningful level. There is plenty of emotional teenagers out there and they deserve music that will engage them. Being a teenager is tough and perhaps when Lil Yachty grows into a Big Yachter he can calm those stormy seas. For now, Teenage Emotions serves only as an emotionless wreck.
3.0/10
Top Tier: “Dirty Mouth”, “Like a Star”, “X-Men”, “Peek A Boo”, “Harley”
Joe Budden's Wrath Tier: “Bring it Back”, “All Around Me”, “Better”, “Lady in Yellow”, “No More”
(Shouts out to my girl Emma for making the cover of this, she’s the green haired girl, and she’s cool. Congrats Emma!)
